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Working with leading animator Leo Murray and acclaimed journalist George Monbiot, PIRC is putting together a short, snappy animation to explain the scandal of the UK”s outsourced emissions. The animation forms part of an ongoing project by PIRC to ensure the UK’s outsourced emissions are properly tackled by the Government.

Leo Murray is a leading British animator and climate activist. Besides being heavily involved in environmental activism over the past decade, he was lead animator on climate blockbuster The Age of Stupid, and writer and director of acclaimed animated short on the threat of runaway warming, Wake Up, Freak Out – Then Get a Grip (www.wakeupfreakout.org).

PIRC are delighted to have been granted funding by Artists” Project Earth (APE) and a number of other foundations to produce the animation. Watch this space for more details as we get closer to completion and launch!

As part of Bristol Big Green Week, PIRC are co-organising a workshop on The Ethics of Advertising.

Date & time: 4.00pm – 5.30pm, 13th June 2012

Venue: Arnolfini, Light Studio – Bristol

Advertising is everywhere, yet few questions are asked about its effects on our consumption, our freedom of choice, or our cultural values. This workshop will examine the deep ethical dilemmas advertising raises – and explore some ways in which we can start tackling them, both locally and nationally. With Jon Alexander, former adman turned industry whistleblower and co-author of Think of Me as Evil?; Agnes Nairn, co-author of Consumer Kids; and Guy Shrubsole, Director of PIRC.

Insomniac followers of PIRC may have already caught this, but at around 3am last night Radio 5 live’s programme ‘Up All Night’ featured a slot on the topic of outsourced carbon emissions by Julian O’Hallaran – including some (fortunately pre-recorded) comments by PIRC’s Guy Shrubsole.

The influential Energy and Climate Change (ECC) Parliamentary select committee have today demanded the government take responsibility for the UK’s still-rising emissions, stating Britain “has to address its consumption if it is to make an effective contribution to a global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions”.

Whilst on paper, Britain’s carbon emissions have fallen by 19% since 1990, when measured on a consumption basis – by factoring in imported goods that the UK consumes – they have risen by 20% over the past 20 years.

As the Public Interest Research Centre (PIRC) showed through an investigation using Freedom of Information requests last year, ministers and civil servants have been fully aware of this extremely concerning trend for many years, yet done nothing – content to maintain a conspiracy of silence.

Since the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009 and the ‘Climategate’ debacle of early 2010, media interest in climate science has declined, and the public become somewhat more sceptical about its veracity. Yet the evidence base itself has only become more robust in that time. Conveying the certainties and uncertainties of climate science to the public – through a media that has become much more polarised about the subject – is a recurrent challenge for campaigners.

Responding to this, PIRC has put together the following set of factsheets, covering different aspects of climate science. The factsheets look at the evidence for climate change from a range of angles, such as global temperature trends and Arctic ice melt, and traces the fingerprint of climate change in various phenomena, from floods and heatwaves to wildfires and species extinctions. Each briefing contextualises the issue in question, summarises the background science, and addresses common objections raised by sceptics. Drawing on the latest peer-reviewed studies, they are intended to be a solid, reliable and concise guide for campaigners wishing to communicate climate science with accuracy and confidence.

Climate change research encompasses tens of thousands of peer-reviewed studies, decades of observations and the work of thousands of scientists. But too often this valuable knowledge doesn’t reach the people who need it most: climate change communicators & campaigners. By taking the latest scientific research and translating it into practical factsheets on a wide range of climate change topics, we hope to ensure that those responsible for communicating climate change to a wider public have easy access to the best available evidence.

“Every day… some businesses are dumping a waste that is toxic on our children. Products and marketing that can warp their minds and their bodies and harm their future.” Not the words of some zealous activist, but those of David Cameron, just before the last election. They’re worth recalling today as Unicef launch their Children’s Rights and Business Principles.

Principle 6 states that businesses should “use marketing and advertising that respect and support children’s rights”. That this ethic even needs spelling out speaks to the huge impact the commercial world increasingly has on children around the globe. Marketing to children is an increasingly lucrative industry – in the US, companies are estimated to spend $17bn a year targeting kids – and the means used to ensnare them in the consumerist net are increasingly pervasive.

From online ‘advertgames’ that blur the boundaries between commercials and entertainment, to recruiting children as peer-to-peer marketers, companies’ efforts at selling to kids are growing more insidious. The UN Principles recognise this concerning trend in stating that marketers must “consider factors such as… children’s greater susceptibility to manipulation” when conducting their business. And with good reason: as marketing academic and children’s campaigner Dr Agnes Nairn puts it, much marketing “operates darkly, beyond the light of consciousness”.

A good piece today by Ros Donald over at Carbon Brief examines the Government’s latest emissions figures. PIRC spoke to Carbon Brief, commenting on the new figures: “It seems like a cop-out on the part of the government given that this research is being done but not publicised or used to drive policy.”

The IPA’s 44 Club are hosting a debate tonight entitled ‘Is advertising out of control?’, sparked by the questions raised in our report Think Of Me As Evil?.

Does advertising fuel consumerism or is consumerism just evolution? Join us on 20th February for a lively debate surrounding the social and cultural impacts of advertising on society.

Advertising is a form of communication that is used for the greater good of society, right!? Public service advertising has certainly proven to be an effective way to increase stroke awareness, promote energy saving and fight domestic violence for example, and yet the advertising industry is forever under threat as ad campaigns continue to push the boundaries between what’s acceptable and what’s not.

The ad industry should be held more accountable for its actions states the ‘Think of me as Evil?’report recently published by WWF-UK/Public Interest Research Centre. The report is aimed at opening up the key ethical debates in advertising. It suggests that the deeper impacts of advertising, particularly on social and cultural values, have not been called out and debated. But in the face of social, financial and environmental crises, the industry cannot bury its head in the sand on these issues any longer and must take on its responsibilities. As Avner Offer, Professor of Economic History at Oxford University put it, “despite its alarmist title, this is a careful evaluation of the costs and benefits of advertising. It makes a good case, on economic, social, and cultural grounds, for respite from the all-pervasive advocacy of consumerism.”

On 20th February at the IPA, Jon Alexander, co-author of the report; Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman, Ogilvy & Mather UK; Guy Champniss, ex advisor to CEO of Havas and to World Business Council on Sustainable Development, and author of Brand Valued; and Jamie Whyte, Head of Research and Publishing at Oliver Wyman and ex philosophy lecturer at Cambridge University will battle it out on stage at a 44 Club event to answer the queston: Do the ill-effects of advertising outweigh the benefits? The panel will also touch on subjects such as, does advertising merely redistribute consumption? Is it simply a mirror of cultural values and one that enhances choice?

The event will start at 6.00pm with a drinks reception. The debate will begin at 6.30pm, followed by Q&A. The event will close at 8.00pm.

PIRC’s Co-Director Guy Shrubsole has given evidence before a Parliamentary Select Committee on the subject of outsourced emissions. A video of the session held by the Energy and Climate Change (ECC) Committee can be viewed here. A transcript of the session can be read here.

What did you watch over Christmas? Sky’s new production of Treasure Island? A catch-up of season two of The Killing? Or… lots of adverts?

Whatever you watched, it’s very likely that you got treated to a high volume of advertisements. The average Briton is exposed to 250 TV commercials every week[1], and that’s just broadcast ads. Environmental campaigners and behaviour-change analysts rightly focus much of their attention on influencing editorial agendas – getting a cause into the news or ensuring a documentary about an issue is accurate. But to keep on ignoring the commercial advertising that surrounds such editorial agendas (and thanks to product placement, increasingly pervades them) would be a big mistake.

PIRC attended a workshop on the Future of Advertising on 12th January 2012 organised by industry-funded think tank Credos and the Futures Company. We look forward to seeing the finished report in March this year.

Patrick Burgoine offers up this nicely-annotated notepad of his thoughts from reading Think Of Me As Evil?, 11th Nov 2011.

‘Think Of Me As Evil or Do No Evil?’ by Jonathan Akwue at Engine, 17th Nov 2011. (Making a fair point about how we don’t consider Google or other advertising-funded internet businesses much in our report.)